Review: Race

The “director duo” serves up a thriller that doesn’t have a single dull moment in it – or a single brain cell, for that matter.

MAR 23, 2008 – CONSIDERING THAT RACE REVOLVES AROUND A HOMICIDE that will cause an insurance policy to cough up twice the insured amount, considering the double crosses and the femme fatale who’s discovered to have been a tramp from an early age and the claims investigator whose instincts yell “murder” when the facts apparently say “accident,” and considering that a significant part of the opening portions are explained away with a voiceover, you could make a case that Abbas-Mustan’s latest feature is based on Double Indemnity – but no court in this land would buy your argument. If scraps from that classic noir are indeed present here, they’ve been smelted down into one of those generic pieces of glitter-trash that only an especially mediocre filmmaker can forge – something so indiscriminately filled with acts of narrative rug-pulling that you wouldn’t be surprised if, by the end, the perp was revealed to be a little green man from Mars. These twists are intended to keep you jumping out of your seat with well-I-never squeals, and while they certainly ensure that the pace of Race never flags, most of these contrivances are so stupid and so dependent on mind-boggling levels of coincidence that you can’t take a minute of it seriously.

That, of course, may be the whole point to this sort of entertainment – that you don’t want to take a minute of it seriously – but deriving undemanding fun for a couple of hours is one thing, and laughing hard at the clueless wannabe-ness of it all is quite another. What Race wants to be is some sort of edge-of-the-seat thriller, filled as much with twisty plot points as tooth-breaking dialogue. (“Zindagi ki race mein insaan ko ek saathi ki zaroorat hai,” goes a description of relationships in racing metaphors.) And if you’re not rolling your eyes at the glum portentousness of these lines, you’ll be cracking up at the clumsy attempts at character delineation. How do you know Ranvir (Saif Ali Khan) is a daredevil? Because he takes a dive from a hot air balloon into a race car and zooms off towards a cliff and brakes just in time. And how do you know his brother Rajiv (Akshaye Khanna, who surely has done something dreadful that Abbas-Mustan have photographic evidence of; how else can you explain this once-fine actor’s inexplicable allegiance to the director duo?) is a lush? Because he wakes up every morning to a chilled glass of beer. And how do you know that these siblings are men’s men? Because they run a stud farm. Named “Stallions.” No wonder the film is essentially a record of their epic pissing contest, each one aiming higher and farther in increasingly insane instances of macho one-upmanship.

The sole point of interest for me in Race was watching what is becoming of mainstream Hindi cinema. Abbas-Mustan were never the best of filmmakers, but when they made a Baazigar, there was at least an attempt to infuse a Hindi-ness, an Indian-ness, even if the source material came from the West – for instance, with Rakhee’s maternal bonding with Shah Rukh Khan, which created sympathy for the hero because it was his mother’s mental condition that drove him to those killings. Today, in Race, barely a trace of emotion flickers across Saif as he presses a remote-control button and sets off a bomb that kills someone who betrayed him. These characters have Christian weddings and Christian funerals – who knows? Maybe there are no crematoria in Durban, where Race is set – and even the songs they sing are no longer about pyaar and beqaraar and intezaar. When Katrina Kaif – the looks-hot-acts-not trio is completed by Bipasha Basu and Sameera Reddy – expresses her love for Saif, her body approximates a sine curve as she croons, “Touch me, kiss me, hold me,” and later, when he proposes to her and a song ensues, his intentions are expressed through this lyric: “I’m craving for your body now.” Somewhere in between, Anil Kapoor plays a fruit-chomping, Karamchand-like investigator who, upon hearing that his assistant’s heart is going dhak-dhak, places his hand on her itsy-bitsy bikini top to verify the fact. Had Manoj Kumar been asked to sum up Race with a one-liner, here’s what he’d have said: The ghor Kalyug our elders prophesied is upon us, and it’s playing at a multiplex near you.

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Heard after submitting the review that this isn’t taken from Double Indemnity but something called Goodbye Lover, which I looked up and discovered was a “satiric spin” on Double Indemnity. So much for that first paragraph…

I tired to analyze this movie based on what wikipedia defines as the characteristics of a thriller. It seems that the directors followed that to a T, but missed the most important part i.e. the film should “thrill”.

This is what wikipedia says: “The heroes in most thrillers are frequently “hard men” accustomed to danger” That explains the “clumsy attempt at character dilineation”, doesn’t it?

Not so off-topic (there’s the quintessential connection of true spirit of baffling atrociousness, you see), did anyone (and I mean those who watch Tamil TV) get to watch the 2007 Tamil film Agra on Kalaignar TV today?

Someone has to say something about this film somewhere (thanks, Baradwaj) for the sake of the larger good, for the sake of a better world, so here goes — Whoa!

hello mr. rangan, have been an ardent fan of urs for a very long time….decided to comment only now…it’s fascinating how u breakdown films to their essentials and pick on exactly where they went wrong! amazing…looks like you could be a great script docotr or screenplay writer if you wanted…why don’t u give it a shot?

I was roused this Saturday morning by a cousin’s phone call. In between other matters the conversation turned to the events of the previous night.
Cuz: We saw race last night. You should watch it. Its well choreographed.
Me: You mean the songs.
Cuz: No the entire movie.
And that is when I made a mental note to not watch it. Your review has now confirmed my mental assessment of his description. Great LOL moments in the review though!!

brangan: Thanks for this racy laugh-fest of a review! I’m in no hurry to catch the movie anytime soon but if someone were to ask me about it in the meantime, I guess all I need to tell them is “..the film is essentially a record of [the Saif-Akshaye duo’s]epic pissing contest, each one aiming higher and farther in increasingly insane instances of macho one-upmanship.” Simple enough. I can remember that, I think. 🙂

Now a segue — this line here “[Race is] filled as much with twisty plot points as tooth-breaking dialogue (“Zindagi ki race mein insaan ko ek saathi ki zaroorat hai”) instantly reminded me of what you said in your Just Married review: “…this is the malaise of our generation – the incessant need to talk, discuss, analyse…). I think one can never be reminded enough of this “malaise” within the framework of any relationship…So thanks!

And lastly, accurate or not, it’s interesting you should mention Double Indemnity. I was just looking up essayist David Rakoff after reading a funny funny essay of his from a collection called “Fraud” and stumbled upon his 2001 NPR interview with Terry Gross (heard of the popular “Fresh Air” series?). You should listen to it if, for nothing else, his Double Indemnity trivia bit (fast forward to time stamp 19:00 if you’re too wearly to sit thru the nearly 15 minutes of lovable Rakoff ramble, although I loved every little bit of it!).

Well, I think we are being a tad too serious in our thrashing of the movie. The movie is in the mould of our modernistic set pieces like Dhoom, Dhoom 2 and Dus. All of these are not expected to be intelligent thrillers and are as brain dead as any of the other members of this pack. So going to the theaters and expecting intelligent entertainment (err..why? ) and then coming out and thrashing the movie, is kind of an exercise for the sake of exercise. Between Dhoom, Dhoom2 and others, atleast Race gives you a better timepass and value for money.

Good or bad, these are our modern Grindhouse-Action genre fare (and we know it). So perhaps we should occupy a lower “high-ground” while reviewing this movie.

karthik: Actually the first Dhoom wasn’t bad at all — at least copared to what followed.

vimal: I always wonder how bad movies are narrated to big stars. I mean, how can you go to Saif and tell him this story with a straight face?

Deepauk M: Your cuz if quite right, actually… Take away the slo-mo moves and the choreography in general, and you’d have nothing left.

Sagarika: Thanks foe that link. And nope, never heard of Fresh Air…

Vikas Bhargava: I think Sunny Deol movies are our grindhouse films. Guddu Dhanoa, those sort of people. This is just a bunch of guys pretending to be cool when cool is the last thing they are – and it’s annoying as hell. It’s not even enjoyable on a trash level.

br, you are attributing too much intelligence to the big stars. I mean, Saif has like, 5-6 good movies in his career? I would imagine those happened by accident rather than his 90% crap stuff.
You think Saif is going to raise his eyebrows and say “hey!thats too low-brow for me” when Race is narrated to him. I dont think so.It is not as if he is a Kamal Hassan

I am with Raj on this. I dont think Saif’s that big an actor.Of course, he has won the national award.But that is still a mystery to me!!! Its only post Dil Chahta Hain that Saif has come to whatever level he is now. I still remember some of his idiotic movies of the past with Akshay and Sunil. Moreover, he is good only in multistarrers and has been capable of carrying only Hum Tum on his shoulders successfully.and according to me, Hum Tum is again an overrated film.

But why on earth is an actor like Anil Kapoor accepting films like Musafir, Welcome and now this crap?

Btw, the only person with a positive shade in the entire movie is Sameera, isnt that so?

Saif’s Natl Award was for Hum Tum, and for some strange reasoning like “…comic roles dont get appreciation hence…”. It wasnt a bloody comic role in the first place. And it wasnt a out-of-the-ordinary performance for the genre of the role that it was. Did he do anything in that role that Rishi Kapoor, or Kamal-in-his-annoying-late-70’s-early-80’s phase, or Nagarjuna-at-his-best-which-is-like-saying-agarkar-at-his-best havent done before? No. Probably, Omkara was his best and *could* have deserved an award (even that couldnt have been if Irfan’s namesake was in the same year). But how much of the credit should go to Vishal? By that token, Karthi should receive an award for Paruthi Veeran. Not that I am saying he should but going by the stupid logic propogated on Saif’s acting quotient(“I cant believe this is the cool dude of Dil Chahta hai, and the suth bombay boy playing the mean, rurally rural ruffian in Omkara – what a transformation” kind of logic. Yes, it was his career best but no, there’s nothing unusual about a south bombay dude playing the rural ruffian. Thats what actors do. It is indeed an apt comment on bollywood that it is only now that they have reached the stage of evolution where they can appreciate that an actor can perform a role that is not his natural persona!

but b, don’t you think you missed the finer, more subtle point that this film raises which is: to wax or not to wax when filming a shirtless scene? 🙂

akshaye khanna may indeed have an inexplicable allegiance to the “director-duo” but at least give him this much credit: he refused to wax his very hairy chest and torso for this, umm, d—flick. i say, THAT takes some guts and integrity in this day and age of hairless men. saif and his shiny, bald pecs were fine and everything but all i could think was “ouch, that must have hurt”.

Will horrors never cease ? Seems this movie is a hit 😦 Wonder what the “director-duo” will think of next ? On an other note, caught The Darjeeling Limited and I actually loved it . (surprising considering it had been panned universally ) Did you happen to catch it ?

Just saw this – all I could think of was how everyone slept with each other. Saif slept with Bipasha and Katrina. Akshaye also slept with them both. It’s a wonder that Saif or Akshaye didn’t sleep with Sameera or… Anil even. This reminded me of Rakht from a few years ago – I remember there was a village bike in it, who slept with all the male characters!

Lara should have done Sameera’s role, she has much better comic timing at playing the clueless bimbo. But being leered over by Anil is not exactly an enticing prospect.

Thanks for the entertaining review Baradwaj. Have been away from your site for a while, really missed reading your pieces. 🙂